Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has (a) ethical and (b) reputational criteria that companies must satisfy to be awarded NHS contracts.

National Health Service bodies set their own policies on how to award contracts, but they must do so in line with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and central policy. The Government uses a standard selection questionnaire that requires suppliers to confirm they meet certain standards. Suppliers can be excluded for a variety of reasons, including where they are guilty of grave professional misconduct or where they have shown significant or persistent deficiencies in the performance under a prior public contract. Information on the policy relating to the Standard Selection Questionnaire is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ppn-0323-standard-selection-questionnaire-sq

From an ethical perspective this also includes references to Social Value, Modern Slavery and Carbon Reduction policies.